The Black Knave by PATRICIA POTTER Page A

money.”
    “Before you were run out of Edinburgh by Charlie,” Rory retorted. The young prince had taken Edinburgh in September the previous year.
    “I heard you stayed none too long yourself, Rory.”
    He shrugged. “My family’s loyalties were well known.”
    “And where were you during the fighting?”
    “Beside my father, of course. Earning the king’s gratitude.”
    “I thought you were a lover, not a fighter.”
    Rory took out a snuffbox, took a sniff or two. “I can swing a sword. I fostered with the earl of Fallon.”
    The captain looked at his clothing dubiously. “I never would have guessed it.”
    Rory waved his handkerchief in Lehgren’s face. “I avoid reminders as much as possible. You were quite right to observe I care little about the… discomforts of the battlefield.”
    “And now you have a wife, a battlefield of another kind, I trust. I’ve heard MacDonells were quite fierce.”
    Rory inwardly winced at the word “were.” Outwardly, he shrugged. “She is tame enough.”
    “I heard she was plain.”
    Plain ? Mayhap in some eyes. For a moment, he thought of the thin, determined face, recalled the desire that he felt when he’d touched her. She aroused something in him. He wished she didn’t.
    “The fortune she brings makes her quite presentable,” he said. “Now about that game. I have a few errands first.”
    “The fair Elizabeth?”
    “A gentleman never discusses a lady.”
    “Give her my best,” Lehgrens said. “Tell her that if she ever gets bored with you, I would be more than happy to take your place.”
    “I will do that, my friend,” he said, rising. “Ten o’clock tonight?”
    “If you promise not to run off as I am winning.”
    “You have lost none of your optimism, Captain.”
    “I need some recreation. The Stuart bastard continues to allude us. Cumberland is not a happy man.”
    “I hear you’ve caught a number of Jacobites.”
    Lehgrens’s face clouded. “Some. Not enough. That damned fellow called the Black Knave is smuggling them out of Scotland. Damned if I know how. The duke has put a five thousand pound price on his head.”
    Rory shrugged. “It’s thirty thousand pounds for Charlie, is it not? No one has come forth yet.”
    “The Black Knave is no Charlie. They might protect their prince, but not an outlaw.”
    Rory brushed at his face with a lace handkerchief. “Mayhap you are right. Do you have any idea who he is?”
    “Some Jacobite. They say he’s a graybeard, but he’s as agile as a fox.”
    Rory stood. “I am quite confident the king’s forces are capable of finding the blackguard. Still, it’s discomfiting knowing the brigand is running around free. He might well turn on honest citizens.”
    “He has protection. But we’ll root out the traitor if we have to arrest every Scot in this damned country.”
    Rory raised an eyebrow.
    “Excluding present company, of course.”
    “Thank you,” Rory said, throwing several coins on the table. “I will see you in a few hours.”
    Elizabeth would be at the theater at this hour of the day. Rory, a frequent visitor, was allowed in a side door, then to her dressing room.
    She was alone, applying cosmetics for her evening performance. She was an artist in the medium, able to transform a man into a woman, or a woman into a man, a young man into a graybeard.
    She obviously saw him in her mirror and turned, a broad smile on her lovely face. The daughter of a dispossessed lord after the “Fifteen,” the Jacobite rising in 1715, she was left penniless with naught but a pretty face and a talent for acting. She’d made her way to Edinburgh and, adopting an English surname, became a fashionable courtesan, then actress. She’d also been mistress to a number of English and Scottish lords. Now she had the funds to do exactly what she wanted, and that was mainly to tweak the noses of men who’d used her and destroyed her father.
    “Rory. It is good to see you, even in that hideous coat.”
    Rory